The End of Summer

So today is August the 20th. I officially moved back in to USC on the 18th (that's 2 days ago for those of you who still have summer brains). Although classes don't start until Monday the 23rd, I don't see there being much of a chance that I'll get through watching 50 movies in the 62 or so hours I have until I have to get to my first class. There just simply aren't enough hours!

At first I was a bit bummed that I did so pathetically with my list of movies this summer. I mean, 15 out of 65 movies?! (For the record: I watched, but didn't get around to writing about Dial M for Murder, Adam's Rib, and Baby Doll. So it does equal 15) I had a plan! I'm a film production student! Aren't I designed to watch movies? Well, there was one thing I forgot about being a film production student: I also like to do other things than watching movies so that I'll actually have something to make movies about.

And speaking of making movies, I finally got around to finishing editing a project I started during first semester. It's written by and stars Clinton Jake who I met during orientation. After he helped me out with some last minute acting in a 24 hour film challenge, he asked me if I could help him out by directing a film he wrote entitled "I Love Me". It became a very interesting experiment, directing someone in something they wrote, but I think I got some of my voice through in the editing (I kind of went a little bit crazy with the sound effects and music). The short film certainly is no Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but I'll put a link to it here anyway, in an attempt to promote myself as a filmmaker. Here it is (if you give a damn).

But enough of that. The point of this post is that although I'm sad that I didn't watch as many movies as I wanted to watch, or make as many movies as I wanted to make, or write as many blog posts as I wanted to write, we have to keep in mind the blogger from Post #1 who was determined to write a blog starting New Year's Day... and never wrote anything else. At least I'm better than that.

And although the summer is over, I do still want to watch the rest of those movies on my list, and I will get around to it. It may take me a very long time, but I will watch them, I WHILL! (That's a Hot Rod quote for those of you who haven't experienced it's brilliance). When the mood strikes me I may also blog about them. But don't hold me to that.

I'm a very busy girl, in a very busy, pop-culture filled world.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

I saw this a very long time ago, so it's HIGH TIME that I write about it!

First of all, I have to say that Frank Capra is one of my all time favorite directors. I mean, he directed one of my all time favorite movies: It Happened One Night! My junior year, I wrote a paper about comedy films in the Great Depression, but really I chose that topic as an excuse to write about that classic film that inspired Bugs Bunny's character. During the research for this paper, I fell in love with Frank Capra. I was reading one particular interview with him in Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age: At the American Film Institute that absolutely fascinated me, has stuck with me ever since and has been monumentally influential to me and the types of films I want to make. I liked the interview so much that I photocopied the entire 32 pages of Frank Capra's interview so that I could keep it forever and not have to spend the money to buy the whole book. Clever, huh? 

I photocopied all those pages, but the most important part to me is only about a sentence or so long. I would quote it directly, but I just went looking for the pages and I can't find it in the mess that I call my room. It was Frank Capra discussing his directing style and how he would have actors rehearse twice as fast and then pull back just the slightest bit so all the dialogue would go at about a speed 1.5 times as fast as normal dialogue. He said he did this to keep ahead of the audience because when he went to other movies he noticed the audience laughing at jokes before they were even done being said. He wanted to fix this by having the dialogue faster. BRILLIANCE! When watching his movies, it's a little more subtle than you would guess from the way he talks about it in his interview, but you can tell and it does keep your attention. Although I do love the slow pace and awkwardness of the modern indie film, I think a lot of comedies today could be improved by picking up the pace and I have decided (semi-based on Frank Capra) that I want to direct my comedy films in a much more caffeinated, farcical and stylized way.

But I shall write about all my hopes and dreams of directing in another post. I have digressed from my discussion of Frank Capra's awesomeness...

Another memorable chunk of this interview talked about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and how because one side of the lead actress, Jean Arthur's face looked like an "angel" and the other looked like a "horse" they  only shot her from one side (her good side of course) the entire movie. This was a fascinating thing to observe while watching the film. The sets were built and the camera set up so that she only had to enter on her good side and it was staged so she only had to occasionally cross and reveal the "horse" side of her face (and only for a brief moment if at all). She was also usually put in extravagant hats that sloped down one side of her face, brilliantly hiding that unfortunate side of her face. You can even see in the poster above that her right "bad" side is mostly hidden by James Stewart's face and her good left side is very much favored!

This bit of knowledge before going into the film certainly influenced my experience of the film. Does an obscure book of interviews count as pop culture? I think not... but I will for the purpose of keeping this blog within a theme.

Despite the distraction of watching only one side of Jean Arthur's face, I really loved this movie. Just like I have loved all of Frank Capra's other movies I've seen (It Happened One Night of course, You Can't Take it With You which my high school also did a production of a few years ago, Arsenic and Old Lace, and of course It's A Wonderful Life).

 It's certainly one of Capra's more patriotic films (not counting all the  Why We Fight films he did during World War II which I have not seen), and that's saying a lot because Capra is most certainly a very patriotic director. A film like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington would never get made today. Hollywood tends to lean much more towards films berating congress and the government for this poor decision or that unfixable and upsetting corruption, than ones that glorify the American congress and our wonderful freedoms and rights as citizens in this fantabulous country. You certainly wouldn't find a five or so minute montage of Washington D.C. monuments superimposed over a massive American flag waving in the wind in a movie today. My initial reaction was to think the patriotism overdone and ridiculous, but that made me think about the time the film was made (when patriotism was more of a good thing), and the time and place I've been raised and our film industry today (where patriotism has more of a bad spin to it).  It was very interesting...

Before I conclude this post I would like to add one more thing. I wish they had shown this film to me in my high school Government class. I learned more from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington about our Congress and how laws are made than I did for the entire semester I took that class. It made me realize that 1) I went to a public high school, and that even though it was pretty and looked like a college campus and had an amazing Drama program it still left me with some pretty silly holes I have to fill in and 2) that films can be really important teaching tools to the masses and 3) that they can do this without assuming the audience is an idiot and can still be thought-provoking, amazing and interesting films. *Not that those films don't exist today.

And finally, pictures of Frank Capra looking intense, alluring, deep in thought and also laughing.

           

COMING SOON: Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder!